Accepting colleges/universities

9 February, 2005 - 5:57pm — Paladin

In a month or two I'm going to have to choose to go to one college of those that accept me (I hope some will). One thing I noticed in my search for the most accepting universities/colleges was how difficult it was to find information on which were most accepting.

How easy is life in your college/university for GLBTQ students?

Please take into consideration:
• How easy it is to date/get laid
• Prevalence of homophobia (among student body, faculty and the town)
• The level of activism in the gay-rights community there
• The size (apparent or real) of the GLBTQ community there
• Any predominantly gay hangouts (bars, restaurants etc.)
• The university/college policy on sexual orientation and transexualism

1 Eugene Lang College
2 New York University
3 Sarah Lawrence College
4 New College of Florida
5 Brandeis University
6 Mount Holyoke College
7 Reed College
8 Hendrix College
9 Smith College
10 Bryn Mawr College
11 Bard College
12 Grinnell College
13 Barnard College
14 Simon's Rock College of Bard
15 Harvey Mudd College
16 Oberlin College
17 Emerson College
18 College of the Atlantic
19 Whitman College
20 Lawrence University

well Ohio Wesleyan University actually had a brochure for their GLBT organization in their admissions office, which is the only college I've seen to do that. I'm in the same boat, so I wish you luck! Peace out

As per your research, you should consider Reed or Whitman College. Reed College is in Portland, a very gay-friendly city, and it has an absolutely beautiful campus. It's quite a nice school too, from what I hear. They're VERY liberal artsy, and they have at least one openly gay professor that I know of (there may be more, but I know one of them personally). Anytime there's some sort of liberal protest in Portland, usually you're going to find a good portion of Reed College students there. :)

Whitman is basically in my old stomping grounds in Walla Walla, Washington. It's a liberal arts college, and I know several professors there, as well. If I remember correctly, Walla Walla has a population of about 90,000+, but it still has a small-town feel at the same time. There aren't really a lot of GLBT hangouts, but I guess there are quite a few GLBT students. I know one of them, and he seems to have a great time at Whitman.

Public universities in the US don't typically have "policies" on homosexuality or transgenderism, and won't generally consider sexual orientation or gender identity as a factor in enrollment. Also, unless you're in some ultra-conservative place like Alabama or Oklahoma, colleges and universities should be pretty accepting environments.

A little bit about my school... I go to Ball State University, which is a liberal arts institute in Indiana. The surrounding area, namely the city of Muncie, is fairly conservative, and we have some homophobic people on campus, but the university community is pretty accepting. We have a lot of GLB (and maybe T, though I haven't met any) students and some faculty, and though there is a gay community outside the university, we don't usually mix together much. As for hangouts, the bar has kind of a bad reputation, but the homos usually congregate at a cafe near the university on Thursday nights following the meetings of our GLBT student group. Muncie is sort of an emerging college town, so activism is still in its infancy, though Indiana's own anti-gay marriage constitutional amendment will soon go to vote in the General Assembly.

Aside from Ball State University (www.bsu.edu, if you're interested), Indiana also has schools like Indiana University in the much more college-townish city of Bloomington, Purdue University in Lafayette, and Notre Dame University in South Bend.

Indiana University is definitely a very welcoming city. It's a liberal arts (mostly) college in a blue county of an otherwise red state. There's an active GLBT student body and the city it's in, Bloomington, even has a gay bar.

While it's a very welcoming and accepting college (it's going to have transgender rooming (genderless) sometime soon) there are still some signs of bigotry. Every now and then we get some backwater church who comes to praise the lord and we even had a professor who said homophobic things in his own blog.

And Bloomington, at least a couple years ago, was rated as one of the top 5 gay-friendly cities in the US.

I too, am doing the college acceptance thing. Basically what i have found is that most colleges that are in large cities, and are public institutions and are in the north tend to be pretty accepting. University of Michigan is really good. It is in Ann Arbor one of the most liberal cities in Michigan. This is a place where you can display the gay pride flag with no problems. Hope this helps!